[K12OSN] Apple Xserve as /home ?

[Jim Kronebusch]

> Anyway, if I buy an actual Apple server, can it export /home for my 
> linux boxes?  (And my Microsoft boxes?)  I still need good 
> support for 
> OS9 clients, so I can't just use samba.

Couldn't you just export /home from the Xserve and modify your
/etc/fstab on your Linux Servers to mount it on startup.  Then configure
LDAP from your Xserve and use Authconfig to set your Linux Servers to
Authenticate and pull users from your Xserve?  I would think this would
do what you want.

On the other hand I think I am using netatalk 1.6 and am having far
better luck serving Appletalk with this than I ever have with Mac
servers.  My solution to get around the stupid .AppleDB, .AppleDouble,
.AppleDesktop crap was to let any folders with those names be writable
by anyone.  I haven't had any trouble with those files under user
folders, only on shared folders.  Problem was someone wrote to a shared
folder, perms were set for them, then another user went to access those
shares and needed to modify one of those three folders and things would
get hosed.  I figured since the folders were hidden and since they
didn't really contain any critical data (as far as I know), there
wouldn't be any harm in chmod 777 to those.

I would think it very easy to write a script for cron to periodically
locate any .Apple* files and chmod 777 if they aren't already.
Otherwise I just manually create those folders upon creation of any new
public share and chmod 777 them manually.  

Except for a small learning curve in the beginning of the year I have
not had one problem since about October with regard to this.

Hope that helps.


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